We humans often find ourselves feeling lost, isolated, depressed, and doubting our own abilities due to the rapid onset of hyper-novelty. The rate at which our world is changing is barely matched by our own adaptability. Our ability to take in new information, adapt to new technologies, and utilize them in our everyday lives has been tested to the limit in the last century. Novelty keeps life interesting. Hyper-novelty is often harder to wrap one's head around.
Now imagine for a moment how this same phenomenon feels to a dog.
They have been displaced from the once useful working partners of humans and brought inside to a world where they are forced to contend with rapid changes from year to year, with no clear understanding of how or why. They are inundated with the sounds, visual stimulus, and even the electromagnetic field generated by the multitude of devices in our homes. They are acutely more impacted by all of this, as they cannot apply the reason and logic to these changes that humans can.
We do things like leave the TV on to Dog TV for them when we leave; we go away for 8-10 hours 5 days a week and make no provisions for their mental stimulation during our absence; we come home and play on the gaming system, watch TV or are on our phones. Even the sounds our devices make can trigger anxiety. I once spent an hour frantically looking for an intruder or other explanation of where a whistled tune was coming from in the house. It turns out we left a tablet on in a drawer, and when a new email came in, the whistled notification alerted us. A dog, left all alone for the day, would have no idea where that sounds was coming from and usually, only our primary care human makes those noises....why is she trapped in a drawer??!!
We offer them an hour per day, where we once spent our workday with them. We ask that they disregard things like cars, motorcycles, aircraft, and buses. We want them to walk robotically beside us and not be running all over exploring their environment. We want them to be couch potatoes on the weekdays and hiking partners on the weekends. Most people have the empathy to ask themselves what their dog's experience is. How they are working through the anxiety that comes with novelty. Dogs that were raised with resiliency in mind learn to deal with novelty and recover quickly. But some dogs do not have the genetics, experience, or support system to deal with novelty.
We ask a lot of our dogs when we ask that they tolerate things that we ourselves often have trouble understanding. We, and our dogs, are living a life in fight or flight mode and a high cortisol experience. Mental health professionals and pet behaviour consultants are all seeing a major deterioration of mental health and an uptick in problematic behaviours and it has only become more prolific with each passing year.
We can do a lot better for ourselves and our dogs by putting down the remote, the phone, and the controllers and going outside to play or take a walk in a place we haven't been before. We can spend a bit more time engaging in activities our dogs will love, because almost assuredly, they will be good for our mental health as well. Those same activities that promote dopamine release can counteract cortisol levels from daily stress. We can offer a whole-food diet (many recipes available or get a consult from a nutritional specialist) and replace overly processed foods that contain questionable ingredients and bioavailability. We can prepare our dogs in advance for upcoming changes and potential stressors.
Under no circumstances is this a castigation of the dog-owning public. I am entirely guilty of this as well. Learning to put down the keyboard, mouse, and phone is something I contend with every single day. There is always so much to do. Carving out more time for my own dogs seems like a lost cause some days, but I have to continue to try to do better. Some days I fail, some days I triumph. Giving each dog what they need can be daunting, but given their shortened lifespan, it is imperative that I make each day count even in small ways, and try to minimize the impacts of a hyper-novel world.
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